Questioning Darwinism: More than an American Pastime

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

PRESS RELEASE

Wednesday, October 11th was an historic day in the life of the European Parliament.

Polish member of the European Parliament, Maciej Giertych, retired head of the Genetics Department of the Polish Academy of Science, and father of Polish Deputy Prime Minister, Roman Giertych, introduced a public seminar on the General Theory of Evolution to fellow MEP's.

Professor Giertych questioned the value of teaching a continually falsified hypothesis - macroevolution - to students throughout Europe, as well as pointing out its lack of usefulness in regard to scientific endeavour.

Professor Giertych introduced the subject by relating how his children had returned home from school having been taught about the theory of evolution. They were told that the proof of macroevolution - the common ancestry of biological life - was to be found in the science of genetics. This was news to Professor Giertych who had spent his life working at the highest level of genetic research. He revealed to the meeting that such proof does not exist in genetics, only disproof.

This was reinforced by the speech of Professor Emeritus Joseph Mastropaolo who had travelled from the USA to participate in the Brussels hearing. He explained that the biological sciences offer no empirical proof of macroevolution, just insurmountable problems. The theory of evolution consists merely of interpretational evidences which by their very nature could be interpreted in many different ways. He told the audience that the theory, after more than 150 years, still lacked any empirical proof.

Dr. Hans Zillmer, a German Palaeontologist and member of the New York Academy of Sciences, told the meeting that the fossil record holds no proof for evolution theory either. Instead of showing gradual change from one species to another, as is often claimed in the classroom, it actually reveals the stasis and stability of life forms.

Finally, Dr. Guy Berthault spoke to the audience about the results of his empirical research programmes concerning the deposition of sediments. Contrary to the established idea that the geologic column was formed slowly over millions of years, horizontal layer by layer, he revealed that his ongoing research proves empirically that the whole column could have been laid down in a matter of months. His research, which has been published in journals of the National Academy of Sciences in France, Russia and China, shows that continuous deposition of water borne sediments sort themselves mechanically and a simple change in current velocity cause strata to build upon each other whilst still progressing in the direction of flow.

In opposition to the existing notion of sediment deposition that is generally taught, Dr. Berthault revealed that his empirical experimental results clearly show that parts of undisturbed lower strata are actually younger than parts of higher strata laid down in a continuous flow.

This means that fossils can not be dated by the strata that they are found in, nor the rocks dated by the type of fossils found in them and makes nonsense of the geologic column as it is currently taught.

Amongst those helping to organise the historic seminar were Dr. Dominique Tassot, Director of Centre d'Etude et de Prospectives sur la Science (C.E.P). C.E.P. is an organisation consisting of 700 French speaking scientists, intellectuals and representatives of other professions, all of whom oppose evolutionary theory on scientific grounds.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1709

[Gman]

Kmart,

Are you saying that Darwinian evolution is questionable??

Prepare for battle then...

[AttentionKMartShoppers]

If that's not off-topic, this isn't either.

[Gman]

Sorry about that... I just wanted to let you know who you were facing.. I'd be careful, he's got 9 lives..

[David Blacklock]

Excellent photo, Gman. Which European pseudoscientist is that?

[Gman]

Excellent photo, Gman. Which European pseudoscientist is that?

Thanks David... I'm not sure but if I had a hunch he would be from Catalina..

[David Blacklock]

heh, heh...good one, Gman

[sandy_mcd]

WARSAW: Poland's deputy education minister called for the influential evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin not to be taught in the country's schools, branding them as lies in comments published on Saturday.

"The theory of evolution is a lie, an error that we have legalised as a common truth," Miroslaw Orzechowski, the deputy minister in the country's right-wing coalition government, was quoted as saying.

Orzechowski said that the theory was a feeble idea of an aged non-believer, who had come up with it perhaps because he was a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him. ...

[Canuckster1127]

I got it stuck in my mind that I had seen an article on this area that was pretty good.

It's a little dated, but the two authors, Larsen and Witham are reasonably objective in this area and it gives some good statistical contrasts between the general population in the US and the Scientific Community itself. I've read books on Evolutionism and Creationism by both of them.

I have a book by Witham that has an appendix that gives the survey data I think this is based on.

It's is long read but I think anyone here could read it to good benefit.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_57388155

Especially interesting is the data regarding the views of American Seminaries in this area.

Let me know what you think.

[David Blacklock]

Bart, maybe it's just me, but I couldn't access that site from your url directions - Dave

[Canuckster1127]

Debating evolution: The God who would intervene
Christian Century, Oct 27, 1999 by Edward J. Larson, Larry Witham

IN THE DAYS before the Kansas School Board's August decision to strip the teaching of evolution from state science standards, the presidents of the Kansas university system issued a statement. "The simple fact is," they said, "people can believe both in God and in evolution."

Lots of Americans believe that they can do just that. Nevertheless, it's not clear how belief in a personal God--a God who creates and who answers prayers--is to be aligned with the scientific view of the cosmos as an ancient universe governed by impersonal and tightly knit laws. Debate on how God can work in an evolutionary universe is unlikely to go away, since most scientists reject the notion that God works in the world while nearly all citizens accept it.

There is some common ground among scientists and religious Americans. Forty percent of Americans hold that God "guided" evolution from simpler to more complex life forms over millions of years. Similarly, four out of ten middle-ranking scientists--a random sample we took from American Men and Women of Science (AMWS)--also believe that God "guided" evolution. These believing scientists also said in the survey that they can accept a God who answers prayers. This implies a God who intervenes in nature and the world, though we did not probe the God question further. Some of the scientists, however, were obviously concerned about how to put a personal God into the world without disrupting any chains of natural law. One biologist said, "God created the universe and principles of energy and matter, which then guided subsequent evolution," and another asserted that God only created "the conditions that allowed the process to take place."

Only about 5 percent of the natural scientists we polled--some 4,000 such professionals--think that God created humans "pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." While rare among scientists, this is the view held by nearly half of all Americans--a striking figure, considering that fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals make up only a quarter to a third of the population.

To get a further sense of the American debate on evolution, this year we surveyed deans at theological seminaries about their schools' approach to the topic. Seventy percent of academic deans at schools in the Association of Theological Schools responded. (The ATS has 237 members.) We asked them which view of natural history and human origins predominates on their campus, and gave them five options: "Theistic evolution," the belief that God works in and through the evolutionary process; "progressive creation," in which God creates at various points over millions of years; "young earth creation," according to which God created the cosmos within the past 10,000 years; or, a mixture of the first two categories or the latter two. About two-thirds of the deans indicated that their schools adhere to either theistic evolution, progressive creation or a mixture of the two--all suggesting an ancient universe. Less than a tenth of the schools supported a young-earth stance. Most of the rest of the schools--about 25 percent--mix progressive creation and young-earth creation, both having an emphasis on God's intervening acts of special creation.

Catholic schools made up the largest proportion of those at which theistic evolution dominates (50 percent). As recently as 1996 the pope stated that evolution was "more than a hypothesis," as long as one accepts that God intervenes to create the soul. Slightly over a third of the Protestant schools and nearly a fifth of the nondenominational enclaves also were thoroughly evolutionist.

Young-earth creationism dominated at less than a tenth of the Protestant outposts and a fifth of the nondenominational schools. Progressive creation is the dominant view at less than a tenth of Protestant institutions, and barely more of Catholic. Nearly a third of the Catholic schools reported a mix of theistic evolution and progressive creation. Each of the mixed stances, moreover, is established at roughly a quarter of the Protestant and nondenominational schools.

On the basis of this data, we suspect that at one-third of the schools--the ones that are purely evolutionist--students struggle to understand God's creative acts and response to prayers in a material universe that runs according to strict laws. The young-earth schools solve this problem by believing that miracle overrides nature. The majority of the schools--nearly six in ten--try to combine the view of a material universe driven by natural laws with a God who, in principle, can miraculously intervene.

Overall, nearly seven in ten students (66 percent)--there were about 70,000 enrolled last year--study God and the Bible against the backdrop of belief in an ancient earth and universe. That antiquity for them included evolution--total or in part--of life, a process that nearly all scientists define as purposeless, unguided, random.

IN 1914 AND 1933 Bryn Mawr psychology professor James Leuba asked scientists if they believed in "a God in intellectual and affective communication with man ... a God to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer." Leuba called this an "interventionist God" and explained that he offered this definition because that is the God worshiped in every branch of the Christian religion." He found a low rate of belief among scientists.

We repeated his survey in the 1990s and found similar results. Far fewer scientists than members of the general public believe in a personal God. The natural scientists, especially the elite group who are members of the National Association of Scientists, have taken Einstein's advice that a personal God could not intervene in a world of "ordered regularity of all events" and that "religion should give up a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

When we asked the seminary deans about God as defined by Leuba, 92 percent accepted the definition: God is one "to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer." The 8 percent who did not almost certainly have a less interventionist God in mind.

Some of the theologians who accepted this definition of God nevertheless expressed some caveats. "This comes close to my belief, but does not touch all points," said one. Others felt uneasy about the formulation. They felt that these "forced choices" limited the ideas of God. Another said she held "a process theology of God that includes [the] reality of communion," and so, yes, she believes in a God who hears prayers. A Jesuit said the definition of God was "inadequately differentiated to allow for a significant response."

Questions about a personal God evoked saltier protests from the scientists. "This is a lot of damn rot!" one scientist said in response to Leuba's question. Another told us that the God question is "utter nonsense" because "science presumes a repudiation of the supernatural." This kind of antagonism to religion is typical of those who hold the view that evolution actually disproves God's existence, or at least makes God irrelevant.

Theologians and scientists who do not wish to go this far have proposed two other models: a "separation" model of mutual respect between science and religion and a "dialogue and engagement" approach that says comparing the two fields is valid.

While many theologians like the dialogue model, they say the separation approach is most prevalent. In the separation model, theology and science abide by different rules on different turfs, say different things about life and bespeak "different levels of knowledge." As theologian-physicist Robert Russell of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences said: "Why would physics know if there is God or not? It's just irrelevant." The separation model makes it easy to reconcile God and evolution.

In the recent book Rocks of Ages, evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould promotes the separation model. Echoing the Vatican, Gould says that religion has a magisterium or teaching authority, but so does science. In his view, the two magisteria do not overlap--he calls this the principle of nonoverlapping magisteria, or NOMA. He quotes Galileo's famous aphorism that theology tells "how to go to heaven" and science tells "how the heavens go."

WE ASKED two more questions of our ATS educators to find out where they stood on the question of separation or dialogue between religion and science. We asked whether their schools offer a course on theology and science (a sign to us that "dialogue" was acceptable), and we asked what was "the most important or appropriate way that theology meets science." Four in ten schools had such a course and more doubtless would have had they not been hindered by financial restraints. Forty-seven percent of Protestant schools had such courses, as did about a third of Roman Catholic and nondenominational schools.

Our survey question about the "most important" way that theology meets science offered three options: theology 1) gives meaning, 2) defends the biblical account of creation or 3) provides ethics. Eight in ten of the theology educators said that "to give meaning and purpose to life in a material universe" was the most significant role for theology.

Fifteen percent of those surveyed said that theology's main role with respect to science is to "support the biblical account of the human creation and fall." Nearly half of those at schools favoring young-earth creation chose this option, as did a fifth of those at schools favoring progressive creation and a third of those at schools that favor both progressive and young-earth creation. Only 5 percent of the theological educators chose the third option: "to put ethical limits on sciences such as biotechnology."

One astronomer responded to our survey by saying that, though he does not believe in a personal God, "I try frequently to open my mind to an influence of what is good, and the subjective and psychological effects of this can be quite profound, such that I am happy to make contact with the religious tradition by saying that I am praying to God." Surely some Americans who believe in "God and evolution" have this sort of God in mind. But to Leuba, as well as to many others, Christian or not, such a God is no God at all. The question remains: Can a God who responds to our faith truly break into the evolutionary universe that science posits?

Edward J. Larson, professor of history and law at the University of Georgia, was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in history for Summer for the Gods, his book about the Scopes trial. Larry Witham, religion writer for the Washington Times, received the 1999 Cornell Award for excellence in reporting religion news.

[David Blacklock]

Good article, Bart. Interesting how the originators of the surveys force the respondants to put themselves in a pigeonhole they might not necessarily pick if they only had more options. If you had - say 30 pigeonholes - instead of three, the respondants that finished would be more likely to find a home of their liking. Many would not finish the survey - too many choices, too confusing.

I liked the way there only main three positions (in the first survey), but then the respondant could create two more possibilities by combining the middle position with either the first or the last.

There is obviously an art to making a good survey. I don't think I've ever seen an assessment of the ins and outs of that art. I've certainly seen lots of accusations about bias in the way the questions are formulated.

[sandy_mcd]

A lot of this concept of the possibility of an interactive God depends on how much determinism applies to daily events.
In other words, how many specific prayer requests/Divine interventions can be accomodated by science?

For example, somone prays that a loved one be cured. The doctors are amazed as the cancer undergoes spontaneous remission. Is this proof of a miracle which flouts scientific laws or an unpredictable happenstance?

Someone else is upset by rampant homosexuality and sinfulness and then Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans. Is this consistent with divine intervention, scientific law, or either?

[David Blacklock]

Sandy mcd says: For example, somone prays that a loved one be cured. The doctors are amazed as the cancer undergoes spontaneous remission. Is this proof of a miracle which flouts scientific laws or an unpredictable happenstance?

Someone else is upset by rampant homosexuality and sinfulness and then Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans. Is this consistent with divine intervention, scientific law, or either?

DB: People certainly do have a tendency to count the hits and ignore the missed.

[Turgonian]

Where's the problem? Christians claim that God works through natural laws and the actions of men.